Tape backups of MSA2000 volumes

[kokane2]

Can anyone advise on best practice for backing up MSA2000 volumes to tape. I have an MSA2012fc with SnapShot 8 and Volume Copy licenses and need to back up one volume regularly. I've converted the standard volume to be backed up to a master volume and created a snap pool on a separate vdisk. If I create a snapshot (which appears as a volume on the same vdisk as the master volume), present that snapshot to a host and back it up to tape, will that be a full backup of all the data or do I need to do a volume copy?
My next question is how to automate or schedule this, as it appears that volumes have to be mounted and dismounted as part of the process.

[Rich Bruklis]

I can take a stab at the first part of your question -

The snapshot is a volume that can be assigned to your server that has your backup application. It should appear to the backup app as another drive letter. You go to the backup app and treat the data as you desire - full backup, differential, incremental etc. The great thing here is that you don't need to worry about the performance (how long the backup runs) because the backup process has been divorced from the day-to-day activity.

The volume copy is similar a backup in that it makes a full copy of the data on a different volume on the array. So doing a volume copy and then backing up the volume copy to tape is OK but you are essentially making two exact copies of the data... the volume copy will consume double the amount of disk space...

Anyone want to answer the scheduling question?

[Rich Bruklis]

I can take a stab at the first part of your question -

The snapshot is a volume that can be assigned to your server that has your backup application. It should appear to the backup app as another drive letter. You go to the backup app and treat the data as you desire - full backup, differential, incremental etc. The great thing here is that you don't need to worry about the performance (how long the backup runs) because the backup process has been divorced from the day-to-day activity on your production servers.

The volume copy is similar a backup in that it makes a full copy of the data on a different volume on the array. So doing a volume copy and then backing up the volume copy to tape is OK but you are essentially making two exact copies of the data... the volume copy will consume double the amount of disk space...

Anyone want to answer the scheduling question?